After a year at Halifax, Herschel obtained a position as organist at the
Octagon Chapel in Bath, a fashionable city of England. This was another
and higher step on the road to fame. He now gave nearly forty lessons a
week to pupils. He composed music, and wrote anthems, chants, and
psalm-tunes for the cathedral choir where he played. He became so
popular from his real ability, coupled with pleasing manners, that he
was occupied in teaching from fourteen to sixteen hours daily.
But he did more than this. As his hopes brightened, he determined to
devote every minute to the pursuit of knowledge, in which he found his
greatest happiness. He studied Greek and Italian. He would _unbend his
mind_, after he retired, with Maclaurin's "Fluxions," or Robert Smith's
"Complete System of Optics," and Lalande's Astronomy.
What if he had devoted this time to ease or amusement! Would he have
become learned or distinguished? Every young man and woman is obliged to
decide the matter for himself and herself. We cannot idle away life and
be great.
[Illustration: CAROLINE HERSCHEL.]
In 1767, the fond father, Isaac, died of paralysis. Caroline, who loved
him tenderly, was desolate. He had taught her the violin when the
prosaic mother "was either in good humor, or out of the way." It is
quite possible that music, like inventions, did not bring an adequate
support for ten children, and that the practical mother wished her
daughter to learn something whereby she could earn a living. She
thereupon sent her two or three months to a seamstress to be taught to
make household linen. After a time a delightful proposition came from
the organist at Bath. He would take her to England, and see if she
"could not become a useful singer for his winter concerts and
oratorios." If she did not succeed, after two years, he would carry her
back to Germany.
In 1772, William came to Hanover and took his sister to Bath, at 7 New
Kings Street. She was now twenty-two; an untutored girl, with a bright,
eager mind, and a heart that went out to her brother in the most rapt
devotion. History does not show a more complete, single-hearted,
subservient affection, nor a sadder picture of a woman's sorrow in later
years, in consequence of it.
At once Caroline began her work of voice culture, lessons in arithmetic,
English, and in keeping accounts, from her brother, and in managing the
house. Alexander, now in England, boarded with William, and he and
Caroline occupied the attic. The first three winter months were lonely,
as she saw little of William.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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